IT IS day 13 of the trial in the Supreme Court in Brisbane of Brett Peter Cowan, 44, who stands accused of murdering Sunshine Coast teenager Daniel Morcombe.

Cowan has pleaded not guilty to murder, indecent treatment and misconduct with a corpse on December 7, 2003.

In latest evidence: In a secretly recorded audiotape played to the jury, Cowan told undercover detectives he had picked Daniel up from the bus stop and made general conversation with him like “the sky’s blue today and that sort of sh--’’.

He said nobody needed to know.

“Once, once it is sorted well that’s it as far as I’m concerned,’’ Cowan said.

He said he thought he crushed the boy’s airway.

“Cause it crushed that and I, like only goin’ by CSI and sh-- like that once that’s crushed, you’re gone. You die from lack of oxygen,’’ he told Fitzy on the tape.

He said the boy was heavy but the sandmining site wasn’t as overgrown as it was in 2011.

Cowan said he positioned the boy so he was lying on his back or his side, with his body positioned from east to west, “so the rising sun rises in their faces’’.

“What I’ve done is f---ing 100 per cent protect myself …” he said.

“I wasn’t out to kill him either you know, and that was definitely not on the cards.”

He said he would have taken the boy back to the shopping centre.

Cowan said he was shocked the body had broken down less than two weeks later.